Noah's Ark
by Harper008
Summary: Elliot resents that he has to rank everything he's ever needed, and after four years away from Manhattan, Olivia, and what used to be he comes back to find that a part of him is still there. eo.
1. Prologue

Author's Note: Inspiration Then I Did, a song by Rascal Flatts. Chance of Anything in This Story Actually Happening Zero. The point Take it all with a grain of salt, and enjoy.

**Noah's Ark.**

**Prologue.**

"What are you doing here?" Olivia crossed her arms across her chest after opening the door to see Elliot standing before her.

"I'm going crazy, Liv." He didn't wait for her to invite him in, but instead pushed past her and into her apartment.

"Elliot? What happened? Are the kids okay?" She closed the door behind him, every possible scenario running through her head. Olivia turned to see his back, and he stood tense for a moment before turning around quickly to face her, his blue eyes shielded behind a wall of emotion.

"She's moving. She's taking them away." He could barely choke the words out. After meeting earlier with Kathy she had told him of her plans; of her boyfriend and new life and house in North Carolina, of all the things she wanted from him but he could never give her, of how she was leaving him behind because she felt like he already had done so to her.

"Wait, what?" Elliot had told her about the separation, but she had assumed, like all the times before, that they would be able to move past it once again, but upon seeing the broken man before her it was clear that that was not going to happen this time.

"She met some guy, she wants to live on the water, so she's taking my kids – my fucking KIDS, and moving four states away!" He yelled, his face red with anger, and he looked Olivia over slowly, and she couldn't help but feel as if he were taking an inventory, trying to measure her up, see her worth.

"Elliot, calm down. El." She reached for him, but he swatted her hand away.

"How the fuck can I calm down, Olivia!?" He threw his head back and let out a growl before turning back to her.

"She can't do that, can she? I mean, she can't just take the kids, you love them." Olivia didn't know how to answer him, how to make this better, especially because she knew that this was out of her hands.

"Love means nothing, apparently. I'm not home enough. I'm not around enough. I don't care enough." He clenched his hands into fists and looked Olivia over once more. "Why am I here?" His eyes locked on hers, and Olivia felt her body go cold. Every feeling that she had ever had was so on edge that they were nearly fleeting, and she stood completely still, not even breathing for a few moments.

"Elliot, you need to talk to her, you can't let her do this, you need those kids." Need. He hung on that word, so caught up in everything that he did or did not need, so confused as to when or why or how he had stumbled across having to rank everything in his life that he needed – his wife, his children, his partner. You couldn't love everything, you couldn't love everyone. Kathy had looked at him, caught his eyes with her own and spoke slowly about how he could not love her and their children and Olivia.

She told him it was wrong.

Everything that he felt, everything that he knew was the only true thing in his life – she told him that it was wrong, she made him loose every sure thing that he had ever found.

And here was Olivia, her arms crossed nervously across her chest, her eyes scared for what he would or could or wanted to say, and he broke, again, another piece of him fell of somewhere along the road to wherever the fuck he was about to end up.

"I-I'm sorry." His voice shook now, his anger replaced by uncertainty and he turned quickly and ran past her, throwing the door open as he ran out, with her fast approaching.

"Elliot! Elliot, what the hell are you doing? Where are you going?" She called to his retreating form, but he didn't turn around, he needed to pretend that he hadn't heard her, needed to avoid her questions, her concern.

He needed to not need her so that he could have them.

The cruelest part of this was that someone made him think that he had ever had a choice.

---

"I don't want to talk to you." Tonite her eyes were red, her betrayal streaming down her face, her eyes avoiding the confusion in his.

"I need to talk to you." He pushed past her once again, into her apartment, but she did not close the door, instead she waited for him to turn to her, holding the door open.

"Get out, Elliot, I don't think that there's anything left to say." Olivia sniffled, swatting at her tears.

"Olivia, please, listen to me. Just let me explain."

"I know why you did it, you chose them. Your family is leaving, so you have to follow, I get that. It's fine. I'm fine." Olivia shrugged, but her tears gave away her lie.

"Shut the door, Olivia. I'm not leaving. Fuck, yell at me, or something. Just talk to me." He begged, and she threw the door shut, walking past him quickly and sitting herself down on the couch.

He had resigned.

He would be gone tomorrow.

He had to follow his kids, he had to be near them, and he hoped that everything else would fall in to place.

"Liv." Elliot walked around the couch and sat down on the coffee table in front of her. "I am so sorry."

"I understand, Elliot. You need to be with your kids, I understand." And she did. She understood that this was what was best for him, for his family, but she hurt for the part of her that was foolish enough to think that he would never go because of her. Hurt for the part of her that lived for him, that thought that there was a chance for something, that she could ever be that important to him.

She didn't understand, however, how she had been called into Cragen's office, ambushed by him and Elliot and a resignation that she had never been told about until just then. She didn't understand how after six years of being together that is what they had come to - a cold goodbye in his office.

She couldn't watch him clean out his desk. She couldn't watch him take every piece of his life that had her in it and remove it. She couldn't acknowledge that this was happening.

She couldn't breath.

She didn't know how to be a cop without Elliot.

She didn't know how to live without being a cop.

She didn't know how to exist without loving them both, without having them both.

She ceased to exist when she came back to her desk 15 minutes after Elliot had left, his desk clear, mirroring everything that she was about to evolve into.

"I had to choose, Olivia, Jesus it wasn't easy, and I didn't know how to tell you, because I didn't want you to think that I chose anything over you."

"Of course you would chose your kids over me-"

"No!" He jumped up and began pacing back and forth in front of her. "I need both of you, my kids, you, I need you both the same." When he jumped up Olivia could smell the alcohol permeate through the air, the smell of cigarettes that fell from his clothing. "But how can I look at my nine year olds and tell them that I'm only going to see them one weekend a month? How can a father do that to his kids, Olivia?"

She never knew that the one thing she loved most about him would take him away from her. His commitment would tear them apart. She looked away from him, not wanting to answer his question because right now, she needed him. She has so fucked up that she needed him to help the pain the he was causing.

She wanted another answer than the logical one.

She wanted another choice than the responsible one.

"And to me?" Olivia felt selfish for asking, but if this is what it was going to come down to – if this single moment was going to be their last, if this was about to be goodbye, she needed to know, she needed to feel him and know him in one last moment of finality.

"Fuck, Olivia, I love you." He dropped to his knees in front of her and he reached for her, but she moved back, away from him. "Don't move away from me, Olivia, just, tonite, just don't-"

"How can you do this?" Her voice broke, and he reached for her face, wiping away her tears.

"I need you too, Christ I need all of you, but my kids, I just, God, Olivia," He hung his head, and she watched him cry, she watched his internal battle pour externally from him, and with all the strength she had left she reached for him, raised his head so that their eyes met, and she leaned down slowly, pressing herself into him.

"Walk out of here tonite, and know that I love you. Take that with you to wherever the hell you'll be tomorrow, Elliot Stabler." She broke their kiss, and he fell back off of his knees, collapsing to the ground.

"This isn't easy, Liv. Six years with you, and you were all I ever breathed." He clenched his jaw to try to keep his words inside, but he couldn't do it, "Fucking hell." He slammed his hand onto the wood floors, and she felt herself shake.

"Love me." This was all they had left.

He would leave in the morning and she would have to get over him, she would have to get past him and try to see something beyond Elliot Stabler and all of her idyllic notions. She would have to learn how to do this whole thing on her own.

She would regret everything.

She would have to. There would be no other way to reconcile this. Add him up as another regret and keep right on moving, at least she knew how to deal with regret.

Loss.

She could not - she would not be able to handle him as a loss.

"What?" He watched her crawl from the couch, and she pressed her lips to his once more, opening her mouth to let him inside and taste him – taste every dream she had had in the past six years.

"Love me." He didn't know what she was asking, if he was asking her to take her with him, in thought, in feeling, in everything. And he wanted to scream that he would, he wanted to take her off of her floor and put her with the rest of his things in a box labeled fragile and move her with him.

"Jesus, Olivia," He moaned, and she cried as she undid his belt, slid it off of his waist, and then stopped, looking to him expectantly.

"Love me." She said one last time, and he pressed his face to hers, their tears mixing to become undifferentiable.

And he did.

---


	2. one

I.

"Stabler!" The older man threw his office door open and then perched himself in the doorway, looking around the grey-green room until his eyes fell on the detective. "Get in here." He grumbled, and Elliot sighed silently, pushing himself up from his chair and walking quickly across the room to the man's office.

"Captain Doolin." By the time Elliot reached the office the white-haired, 50 something year old Joseph Doolin was already sitting behind his desk.

"What's going on with the Leeland case? Do you have any leads yet?" Elliot turned away momentarily before looking back to him slowly.

"There's a sister in Manhattan, works as a preschool teacher, I thought maybe she might know something." He explained, and waited silently for what he was sure would be coming next.

"What are you waiting for?" The older man looked to him expectantly, and Elliot backed up until the wall supported his body.

He was waiting for this for the past four years, some case, some person, some link that would drive him back to everything he had walked away from four years ago. Something that would bring him home, because, as he looked around the empty station, to all those who worked there, who made this their lives, he couldn't help but feel lost.

This was not it for him. The work was everywhere, of course, the people who hated others enough to commit heinous acts against them – they were in every city of every state, but that meant nothing to him – he thought that he could avoid everything in Manhattan, which he had done for the past four years, but now this single case would make him go back.

He felt nauseous, though, because he knew that he could never go back.

"I, uh," He stumbled over his words as if he were searching in a dark cluttered room for some answer that may or may not exist.

"You'll leave in the morning. I'll call SVU in Manhattan and let them know so that they'll be expecting you, it'll be better if you have a base there for whatever you could turn up."

Part of him had been waiting for this, part of him had resented each time a case did not lead him back to New York, but the other half was scared to death of what he would or would not find there. Four years is a long time to be gone – a long time for new ghosts to appear in the space of old ones.

He couldn't speak, the fear blocking every word that could have been pulled from his lips, and he nodded an okay before heading back out into the station, into the cold place he had convinced himself he had fit –into the cold place he had never allowed himself to settle.

Working sex crimes in Manhattan was so much more than brutality and hopelessness, he actually felt as if he was fighting for something, with something, instead of simply always against it. In New York he had a life, not a job. In Raleigh, North Carolina, he had an existence. He had his children, his failed marriage, a job he hated, and a thousand miles between he and Olivia.

Sometimes he wondered how he could ever get so lucky.

---

"Olivia." She spun around in her chair slowly when she heard Cragen call her, he was standing a few feet behind her, his hands shoved deep into his pockets.

"What's up?" She got up out of her chair and noticed the long glance that he placed over her. "Everything okay?" She was nervous, although she did not know why.

"Let's talk in my office." He nodded his head towards his door, and Olivia gave him a half smile, following him in and letting him close the door behind her while she sat herself down in front of his desk.

"What's going on?" Olivia chewed nervously on her bottom lip, and Cragen hung his head, but his eyes rose to meet hers.

"You heard anything about the Leeland case?" He asked her slowly, and Olivia shook her head no. "It's a mother and daughter, Ellen and Jessica, who're missing from Durham, North Carolina. So far the case has turned up cold, nothing from her parents, friends. It's been amplified by pornographic pictures that the station down there has been receiving-"

"Not to be rude, Captain," Olivia cut him off, her mind was racing, the possibilities scattered everywhere, what he was about to say, what he could say. He couldn't send her to North Carolina, he knew what had happened with Elliot – he knew she wouldn't go. But she didn't think that that's what he was getting at, he seemed almost apologetic, almost scared for her. "But what does this have to do with us?"

"He was working on the case in Raleigh, and there's lead to the little girl's aunt, the woman's sister – she works as a preschool teacher in Manhattan." Cragen's words were laced with ambiguity, but they spoke directly to Olivia.

"And?" There was more, she felt it in the air between them, the thick air lingering with everything that was still left unsaid.

"He's coming tomorrow. He'll be here in the morning, he's going to be investigating some leads he has with that, and they've asked for our co-operation." Her mouth was open, she felt the air dry her tongue and she wondered how she should react. Should she tell him that he couldn't come? Should ask why he had every agreed to let him come? But those questions made it seem like she had some sort of choice in this whole thing, and the one thing that she had learned in the past four years was that nothing had ever happened to her by choice.

"So what do you want from me?" Olivia was scared for the answer.

"I wanted to let you know." He looked at her expectantly, and she turned away from his eyes. She wasn't going to deal with this. He had made his decisions, she had lived with them. This was the game they played, even though neither had participated in years. "He's going to be here in the morning, Olivia. He needs our co-operation, he has to work with someone-"

"No." She got up quickly; her body was hot with everything that was about to happen. He left; he shouldn't get the chance to come back. "Not me." She made her voice fill with conviction so that he would know that she would not be the one to do this. If Elliot had to come back, she knew that there was nothing she could do to stop that, but she wouldn't do this with him. She wouldn't pretend that things were how they used to be, she wouldn't play along and act like it was still okay, like he didn't really tell her he loved her and then left her.

Left her broken, each piece of her sharp edged and jagged with no new place to fit. She wouldn't let him come back and play house and pretend that this was all real again, because it wasn't.

It would never be.

"Olivia, you and him-"

"I said no." She ran her hands back through her hair.

This couldn't be happening.

She had wanted him to come back for so long, she had missed him and needed him and wanted him back for so long, but not like this. Not as a visitor who would leave again, who would play with her for a little while and then put her back.

After all, in the scale of things, she was what he needed least, and she would make him live with his decisions.

"I just wanted to let you know, for-"

"He doesn't need to know about him." She glared at Cragen with the protectiveness of a mother.

"Olivia." He cocked his head, looking her over expectantly as she paced back and forth.

"How can he just come back?" She stopped moving and turned to him quickly, embarrassed by the emotion pouring from her eyes.

"I'm sorry." And he was, but it was no consolation to Olivia, her demons went beyond his apologies, she went to say something, but her words were lost in her tangled thoughts, in the black sea that her mind had become at the prospect of him coming back.

No.

He wasn't coming back. He was teasing her. He was visiting her, bringing himself back only to take himself away. That was the only part of him that she had ever had, a brief visit in her life.

Regret.

---

Whoever said that you can never go home again was right, he noted, as he stood outside the door of the station, taking deep breaths, inhaling the city into his lungs. He didn't know why he didn't protest, why he didn't say that he wouldn't come back, why he didn't ask them to send someone else – he didn't know, but he felt. He felt that he needed to come back here eventually, that he needed to see what he had walked away from, that he needed something in his trail of questions finally justified.

He walked through the doors slowly, trying to avoid how familiar it was, trying to avoid the fact that after four years he was coming back to something he had never really abandoned. Elliot had talked himself out of being there, but he knew now, as he took the steps two at a time, as he paused only briefly before opening the door to the SVU room, that he had never been gone.

This was too safe. It felt too right. It may not have been home anymore, but it was a memory he was returning to, a room full of people who he had only seen in his mind.

Once inside he looked to where their desks used to be, to where their desks used to sit facing each other, pressed together with a seamless part. The desks were there, but she wasn't. No one was, at least no one that he knew.

He wondered, even though he didn't want to, where she was. If she was still there, if she was getting coffee, out on the streets, what. He didn't like that two minutes into this and she was no longer just in his mind, but now his body. Her memory was now fast-forwarded to the present, and he feared the uncertainties.

"Elliot." He didn't turn to the direction of the voice; he didn't need a face for it to be identified.

"Captain Cragen." His eyes were still combing the room for some sign of her, for some sign of life.

"Elliot." He said his name again, and this time Elliot forced himself to move from his position, he walked across the room to where Cragen was standing and offered him his hand as a hello.

"How've you been?" Elliot smiled, and Cragen nodded, stepping aside so that he could enter his office.

"Good." He answered simply, and Elliot found himself strangled by the familiarity.

"Wow, this is so – strange." He spoke honestly, and Cragen nodded.

"I never thought we'd be doing this." Cragen gave a half smile as he sat down behind his desk. "What do you need, Elliot? I've set you up with Fin; he'll help with whatever we need to do. But as far as anything beyond that, it's your call."

He wanted to ignore that he was disappointed to be working with Fin. He wanted to ignore the questions it aroused. He wanted to ignore his need to be back with Olivia. To be a cop in Manhattan again, without her, even if it was only for a little while, would not be the same.

He wanted to ignore that he ever thought that this would be the same.

"That's fine, thank you. I assume anything else I need, though, will be okay? Information, all of that?"

"It still works the same, Elliot. Nothing's changed." Cragen reported, and Elliot resisted the urge to call him a liar.

Nothing was the same.

---

"So how do you want to do this?" Fin looked at Elliot expectantly, every question that he had for him pushed aside for the familiarity of their job. Part of Elliot was somewhat okay with working with Fin, if nothing else because he knew that he would resist any questions that he did have and concentrate on what they needed to do.

"I don't want to go right to Julia Aston." He referred to the woman that he was here because of. "I was thinking of asking around first, I have a list of the kids in her preschool class, I was going to talk to the parents, see if they've noticed anything strange."

Fin nodded. "Okay. Do you want to split the names, get it done faster, then we can meet back at the station in a couple of hours and see if anything comes up?"

"Uh, yeah. Sure." Elliot opened the manila envelope in his hand and leafed through a few sheets of paper, handing the last few to Fin. "The kids names, as well as contact information is all on there." He informed him.

"Got it. Anything else you think we should check out?" He questioned, knowing that this whole thing would be him following Elliot's lead.

"I think this is good for now." He felt guilty and wanted to ignore the fact that he may have been procrastinating, that he may have been trying to hang around a bit longer.

You can never come home again, he remembered as he looked around the clouded city, but he was sure as hell going to try.

---

She had called in sick that morning. It was a cop out, she knew, and Cragen knew, but he didn't question her.

She didn't know how anyone expected her to do this, how they expected her to work with him there, how they expected her to do anything with him in such close proximity. Part of her felt like running, like packing up and using all of the vacation that she had never had a need for.

The doorbell cut off her thoughts, a wanted distraction to everything that she was trying to avoid feeling. She walked quickly to the door and opened it without thinking, her entire body stopping when she met the blue eyes on the other side.

"Elliot?" She choked out. How the hell had he found her?

"Jesus Christ." He wasn't expecting her to be on the other side of the door, he wasn't expecting everything that had happened to come down to this single moment, to an unexpected pair of chocolate brown eyes that held everything he had been avoiding for the past four years.

He suddenly didn't know why he was there. He suddenly forgot the paper in his hand that had given this address as one of the children in the preschool class; he suddenly blacked out completely, not sure what he was supposed to do now.

The air between them was heavy, the silence eating away at them, much worse than any words that could have potentially found their way out.

"I, you, it –" He couldn't remember anything except for four years ago, except for making love to her in her old apartment, except for feeling her on him, except for feeling her heart beat onto his chest, except for feeling that he needed to run and remain all at the same time.

"How did you get my address?" Her question was bitter, cold, distant, and she wrapped her arms across her chest, making them a barrier between them. She couldn't let him be there. She couldn't let him do this again.

"Olivia." He didn't know what to say, he didn't know how he could be so sure of something and so unsure of something at the same time, and he noted as she stepped towards him, leaning herself against the doorframe as to keep him out her home.

"Leave." She looked away from him, away from every memory she had buried of him, of every regret that she had chalked him up to.

"Olivia." Every other word he had was lost.

"Goodbye." She turned around and started to shut the door, but he moved forward in a single motion and pushed the door open, not allowing her to shut him out.

"Wait." He stopped her and held the paper in his hand up to her; it was the list of names from the preschool. She walked away from Elliot, ignoring hearing him come into her home, ignoring everything he was surely trying to comprehend as he looked around the little foyer at pictures of a blonde haired, brown eyed little boy. "What the hell is going on here?" His voice was so soft, so scared, that it was foreign.

He had just walked in on a life he would rather have been oblivious to.

"What is it?" She didn't know how she was talking to him, how she was standing in her house with him and actually formulating words that made any sense. She nodded towards the list in his hand, and Elliot looked down at it again.

"I'm here investigating a case –"

"I know why you're here." Her words were bitter, and Elliot couldn't help but feel them. She knew why he was here - for work. She was smart enough to know that he wasn't there for her.

"I'm investigating Julia Aston." He felt her movement stop from where he was. "I have a roster of all the kids in her class, this is where- this is the address – Noah Benson?" He choked out nervously, and Olivia chewed on her lower lip. Elliot was scared of the possibilities; at first he thought that the name was just a sick joke, a way to shove this whole guilt a little deeper.

He never thought that it would lead him here – to her. Either that or he didn't want to think it.

He couldn't think it.

"What?" Part of her came crashing down when she heard the cold way in which Elliot had said Noah's name.

"Is he yours?" His voice shook, and he wasn't sure that he wanted the answer, he wasn't sure that he could handle the answer.

He was stupid for thinking that he would come back to find things unchanged, stupid to think that she would be waiting for him, but as he looked around the house at the various pictures of the little boy he couldn't help but regret everything, regret that this wasn't his house, that this wasn't his family - that this was just some life that he had unknowingly walked in to.

"What do you need to know?" Olivia was sharp, she wanted him out of her life, at least tangibly.

"Is he yours?" Elliot asked again.

"What does that have to do with anything, Elliot?" She was defensive now; defensive for every part of her that wanted him there as opposed to the few that didn't. She wouldn't give him this.

"How old is he?" He didn't know where he had found the question, but it left his mouth before he could stop it, and then it started to sink in, all of this started to sink in. The little boy with big brown eyes and blonde hair and his mother's complexion, this toddler with his mother's last name.

He silently heaved for air, and the door opened behind him. Elliot turned slowly to see a man, maybe a few years younger than himself, with a toddler in his arms. The little boy in the pictures.

Noah.

"Mom! We saw a gator!" Noah squirmed out of the man's arms and ran to Olivia.

Elliot's questions were answered.

Elliot's mind turned off as he observed Olivia and her son, and he felt trapped between them and the man still to his back. Noah's words, his ramblings about the day at the zoo with man standing behind Elliot, accompanied his thoughts.

He had to get out of whatever he had just stepped in to.

"I, uh," Elliot stammered. It hit him then, in Olivia's home, with Olivia's family, that you could never go home again.

"He's three." Olivia called to Elliot's retreating form, answering his question about the boy's age.

He heard her call to him, heard her tell him the age of the blonde toddler, and he kept running, down two blocks, up three, until his legs couldn't carry him any farther.

And when he stopped, gasping for air and adding everything up frantically, he realized that he didn't even know where home was anymore.


	3. two

II.

This morning she was there.

She sat at her desk, her image just like the photograph of her that he had captured in his mind from so many years ago. Her back was curved, her head resting in her hands as her eyes combed over reports.

He didn't want to feel entitled to anything.

He didn't want to feel like he should walk in and she should turn to him with a smile like she had done so many times before. He didn't want to feel like she should offer him a cup of coffee, ask how his night went.

He didn't want to feel like this was right, because it wasn't.

The man sitting across from Olivia today was another stranger Elliot had stumbled upon in his short visit thus far. A younger man, blonde hair and brown eyes, and his spirit seemed oddly elevated, he seemed like he still had some innocence in him, that he managed to keep some sense of livelihood in the middle of such a mess.

"So, anything? I mean this guy comes into the apartment, what he says was hours after the time of death, but he manages to track blood all the way through the house, which wouldn't have been as easily transferable at the time he claims to have been there." Elliot heard the man say, the young man who had stolen his life, who he had practically handed his life to. The little plate on his desk said that his name was Matthew Anderson.

"I think it means he did it." She sighed and moved her chair out from her desk, leaning back as she ran her hands over her face, massaging her temples in small, quick circles.

She wanted to ignore the fact that she could feel his eyes on her, that she knew that he was there, a few feet away, watching her. She wanted to hate the fact that he was doing it, that she felt as if she were in a glass box and he was gawking at her, trying to find something that was or wasn't there. She wanted to love the fact that she knew his mind was reeling, that he was adding up dates, looking at the images of Noah he had seen in his head, trying to piece something together. She wanted to ignore the fact that she wanted him to be hurt by this, that she wanted every ounce of him to break in uncertainty the way that he made her.

"Olivia." Cragen's voice came resounding through the room from his office, and Olivia dropped her head momentarily before getting up, intentionally not looking to Elliot as she did so, and called back to Matthew to double check the man's alibi of the case that they were working on. "Elliot, I'll be with you in a minute." Cragen gave him a nod after Olivia was already inside his office, and then shut the door.

"What now?" She was short with him, and Cragen excused it.

"Fin's in Chicago." He said it quickly, quietly, and Olivia shook her head no. "His aunt died last nite, he took the red-eye, and someone needs to work with Elliot-"

"Anderson, or Munch." Olivia cut him off.

"Munch is in court with the Denison Case until Thursday. I don't think Elliot intends to stay that long."

"Exactly." He didn't intend on staying that long, he was coming to talk to a couple of leads, and then he was leaving, back to North Carolina and everything that he needed more than Olivia.

"I'm stuck, Olivia. Anderson is still trying to catch on, you've seen some of the mistakes he's made already, and I don't want to be embarrassed if he pulls anything like that with Elliot." Cragen begged her with his eyes, he really was stuck, she was sure, but she couldn't let herself do this. She knew herself; she knew that even if she fought it, if she pretended not to be fazed or affected by it, working with Elliot again would still get to her.

"You can't ask me to do this!" She threw her hands up in exasperation. There was always an option C, you just had to look a little harder sometimes. "You - what about you, Cap?" She walked around to the chair in front of his desk and backed up until she felt it against her legs before sliding down into it and putting her head in her hands.

"Olivia, I'm sorry." He apologized for what he was sure would be the beginning of many. "We don't have any other options."

"So then he's just allowed to walk back in here, after four years of nothing – hell, he could have been dead for all we know, and just play with us for a little while when he has the chance? How is that fair?" She paused for a minute, pressing her fingers into her temples, her headache intensified. "Why can't he just do this on his own? He's a good cop, he can handle it."

"He's better when he's with you. You want this over, work with him, work fast, and get him out of here." Olivia jumped up when he was done, kicking the chair out from under her.

"Whatever." She threw her hands up in resignation, she knew that she really didn't have a choice, that he was telling her as a courtesy, but he was going to make her do this. Without another word she walked quickly out of the office, not looking at Elliot, who was standing outside when she left.

---

"Where are we going?" She still didn't look directly into his eyes, her hands were shoved into her coat pockets, and she breathed out the cold city air in tiny white puffs.

"Did you send him – Is he, uh, Is-" He wasn't bothered by her not looking at him, because he couldn't look at her, either. He couldn't let himself fall back into this. He couldn't let himself accept that things had changed, that he was standing here with a mother, aged four years, and who had lived so much more than that in that time, he was sure.

"Noah is staying out of this." She shot back sharply, and she started walking towards the car.

"He's in the class, Olivia." Elliot dropped his head when they reached the car. He didn't want to have to ask questions, he didn't want to assume, he didn't want this to all come crashing down around him like he was sure that it would.

"He's with Eric." She offered no further explanation, and Elliot got into the car, turning it on and trying to let the engine drown out the fact that he was jealous of the man, of the life that he had found Olivia living - of the little boy with his mother's eyes and no recognizable traits of his own.

Stop.

He mentally scolded himself, and he turned to Olivia before he pulled out of the parking space, turned to her back as she was positioned away from him, looking out over the city.

He wanted to know why he felt like no time had passed, but everything had changed.

He wanted to know why everything in him came crashing down when he saw her son – her Noah.

He didn't want his whole body to ache, his chest to feel tight and his thoughts to scatter when he thought of the possibilities of what he had really left in New York.

"Look Elliot," She turned to him sharply, and his breath caught in his throat. He was embarrassed that every woman he had seen for the past four years had never measured up to her, that he had looked for her in them only to come up with nothing each and every time.

"I'm sorry, Liv." He snapped out of his daydream and pulled out into traffic.

She didn't like that he used her nickname, that he still felt entitled to be that close to her. That he still thought of her like that, and maybe it was because it triggered everything inside of her, everything that she had been suppressing that she felt – every feeling, memory, thought, that made her that close to him.

"I don't want to be doing this. You have to be here, I don't." She knew it was a lie, but she wanted him to feel obliged, as if he owed her something – which he did. "The quicker we can just deal with this, the better." Her headache had moved from her temples to her forehead, and she laid her head back on the seat, closing her eyes.

"You okay?" He asked softly, and she didn't want him to care.

"Where are we going, Detective Stabler?" He felt the distance when she rolled his name from her tongue, and he wanted to say that they could go wherever she wanted, back four years, up two. Back to her place, back to his, back to every memory he still kept of her, back to the little boy and an answer that he had to have, but instead he remained quiet as they drove to Julia Aston's apartment.

---

Julia Aston cried the minute the brought up her sister and niece. Olivia stood in the background while Elliot did the questioning. This was not a case they were both working on, this was his. She was just his liaison to the Manhattan SVU.

That's all she was.

Back in the car her cell phone cut through the silence of absent words.

"Hello?" She sounded worried, Elliot noted. "You're mom can't watch him?" She turned away from Elliot. "Okay. Okay, yeah, no, I understand." She said goodbye and then hung up the phone, letting out an exasperated sigh.

"Everything okay?"

"We need to go to 2135 Bainbridge." She looked to Elliot, but she didn't want to give him any more information, and he was afraid to ask for it.

"Okay." Again, there were no words until Elliot pulled up to the old brownstone and parked the car, looking to Olivia expectantly.

"I'll be right back." She got out of the car without looking at him and ran to the front door, knocked a few quick, short times, and then the door opened, the man Elliot recognized from yesterday standing in the doorway with Noah. She hugged him quickly and then took Noah from him, resting him on her hip and then running back to the car.

Elliot got out quickly and walked around to the backseat door behind the passenger's side, opening it for her.

"Eric's getting his car seat." She kissed Noah's cheek quickly and then turned to greet Eric, who approached the three with the little boy's toddler seat.

Olivia didn't introduce them, and Elliot took that as something.

"Bye Eric!" Noah called to the retreating man who was a stranger to Elliot, and Elliot looked to Olivia sharply, who smiled at him slowly.

Part of her wanted him to think that this was his, that this little boy, his big brown eyes and overflow of innocence, she wanted Elliot to hurt for it like she had hurt for him. She wanted him to explode with uncertainty, his mind caught between reality and imagination and she wanted every part of him to want him. She wanted him to burn for him, his curiosity eating at every thing that he had left.

Olivia wanted Elliot to need Noah- to need him more than his next breath.

And after Olivia had strapped Noah in and got back into the passengers seat she looked at Elliot, he was bright red, his eyes concentrated on the rearview mirror, looking to Noah.

He wanted him.

"Mom! I made a macaroni necklace!" Noah kicked his feet against the car seat as he held his creation, a little necklace with colored macaroni's on it, up so that Olivia could see.

"Wow, Noah, that's awesome." Olivia congratulated him, and Elliot clenched his jaw.

He wasn't supposed to walk in in the middle of her life.

He was supposed to be the beginning of it, like she was his.

But he didn't need her enough then, or at least wasn't strong enough to.

"Who're you?" Noah pointed to Elliot, and Elliot looked straight out of the window, not wanting to have to introduce himself.

He couldn't breath because of the guilt.

"This is Detective Stabler, Noah." Olivia said quickly, and her stomach churned, she didn't want to introduce her three year old to Elliot, to the incarnate of every pain, love, emotion that she'd ever had. She introduced him instead to the man that she was forced to work with.

If Noah ever met Elliot, he would love him.

"Oh. Hi then." Noah laughed, and Olivia didn't like that she was smiling. "Mom, can we get chicken and a toy?" He asked innocently.

"What?" Elliot couldn't help but laugh at the question, and Olivia joined him with a soft chuckle.

"A happy meal, you know, how they come with a toy? Chicken and a toy." She explained with a smile, and Elliot took a picture of her in his mind, and then looked back to the little boy – to Noah.

Elliot was scared to think that Noah could possibly save them.

"You like McDonalds?" Elliot called back to the little boy, and Noah smiled brightly.

"Their chicken is the best ones." He yelled back.

"Elliot, you don't have to stop. You can just take us home and I can take him, I know you have stuff to do." She refrained from apologizing, because the truth was that he had inconvenienced her, not the other way around. But, she was nervous as she felt herself start to soften, as she felt herself settle into this alternate reality.

"I have time." He smiled, and Olivia had to turn away, having to remind herself that he was the one who left.

---

"'Tective Stabler coming to eat?" Elliot stood behind Olivia as she reached into the car and took Noah from his seat, setting him down on the sidewalk before turning to Elliot, who was holding a brown McDonalds bag as well as a happy meal box.

"No, Noah. He has to go." Olivia answered immediately, and Elliot took a step back, removing himself from this for one moment to observe Olivia's broken family.

You never forget what it's like to love someone, he noted sadly as she watched her reach back into the car to get Noah's car seat.

"We're near the street." Noah was talking to Elliot, and when Elliot looked down to the little boy he saw his hand reaching up towards him.

"Uh," He didn't know what to do.

"I need to hold your hand." A lump formed in Elliot's throat for everything that he had left behind. "Because of the street." Noah explained further, and Elliot took his free hand and placed it around Noah's.

This façade of a family, even if only for a moment, felt right, and he felt the red crawl up his neck when he couldn't avoid the fact that it wasn't allowed to be.

"Okay, Noah-" Olivia stopped short when she saw Noah holding onto Elliot's hand, swinging it back and forth playfully.

There were no words between them as Elliot's eyes locked with Olivia's, her heart pounding in her ears at the sight, her heart breaking at the hope mirrored in Elliot's eyes.

She didn't want to love him.

"He said he needed to hold someone's hand because of the street," Elliot started to explain, and Olivia looked away, his need to explain anything clearly hurting both of them. This was not how this was supposed to be, her son holding a strangers hand, only he was more familiar to her than anyone she'd ever known.

"Are you coming in to eat?" She balanced Noah's car seat on her hip, and Elliot looked down to Noah for a moment, and then back to Olivia.

He was scared because he knew exactly where he was but was lost at the same time.

With a smile he nodded.

She had invited him in.


	4. three

III.

---

Three days and nights to put some life back in this man,

I ain't holding nothing back,

You got all I am,

Hearts and souls and dreams in the palm of your hand.

- Three Days, Pat Green

---

Elliot wanted to concentrate.

He sat at Fin's desk, his papers, evidence, statements all spread before him, but he couldn't focus on them. His mind was laced with thoughts about his McDonald's dinner with Olivia and Noah, with the soft, quick, glance that he had gotten into their lives. Noah had asked Elliot to stay after dinner, to play cars with him on his rug and the Shrek game on playstation.

And he did.

He stayed and pretended, if only four a few hours, that he hadn't stumbled upon their piece of family, but instead was part of it. He stayed and searched Noah for some sign of himself, for some piece that would link the two together, that would let him be a part of this.

"You got anything?" Olivia called to him from her desk, and he smiled slowly, shaking his head.

"I want to go back to talk to Julia." He cleared his throat and scratched at the back of his neck. Olivia met his eyes briefly, but had to look away when she saw the hope they held, the questions and thoughts and regrets. "When she talked about her parents, she said 'Mom and Greg', sounds like he's not their real father, but when I interviewed them in Asheville, neither say anything about Greg not being Ellen's biological father."

"So you think he had something to do with it?" Olivia looked him over slowly, and he felt it. Elliot looked away momentarily, looked around the station at the past that he had abandoned.

Whoever said that you could never go home again was wrong, he decided today.

"It could be something." He shrugged and got up, grabbing his coat from the back of Fin's chair, and ignoring the fact that Olivia got up automatically when he did, that she followed perfectly in suit, that despite both of their efforts they were getting back to this after only 24 hours.

And when Elliot turned to Olivia she gave him a half smile, not sure if this were right or wrong.

---

"Elliot." He was sitting in the crash room, his back to her, curled over, hands on his knees, and staring out to space.

Julia Aston had cracked, her biological father was schizophrenic, he lived in Tulsa, but was visiting North Carolina three weeks ago. They had found him, found Jessica and Ellen and they were processing him now.

This was all over, this short trip back to the life of Elliot and Olivia, this short escapade that they had tricked themselves into following – done.

"Noah called, he wanted to know if Detective Stabler was coming back for dinner." She called to his back, but couldn't look at him; she was scared at how much her need for him broke down every other emotion that she felt towards him.

Elliot dropped his head, he would have to go back tomorrow to tie up the case in Raleigh, he would have to get on a plane in the morning and try to forget everything that he had stumbled upon in Manhattan.

"It's over." Elliot cleared his throat and stayed facing away from her. He didn't know how he was supposed to do this again.

"What?" She was scared now, her heart racing and the room spinning in circles around her.

"Why does he call him Eric?" He didn't want to leave, he wanted something in Olivia's life to reach out to him, to forgive him for everything that he'd done and let him be with her now, he wanted to erase walking out four years ago by staying now.

"Elliot." She wasn't going to do this to him.

"Do you want me to have to read this?" He turned to her, and her breath stopped when she saw the red in his eyes. In his hand was a small brown envelope, and he held it up to her, getting off of the cot quickly and running at her. "What is this, Olivia? What the fuck is this?" He locked eyes with her, he would not let her lose him again, let her push him aside and make him another check on a list of things she needed to forget.

"What is that?" Each word drew slowly from her lips, and she took short, quick breaths, the possibilities drowning her.

"It's a DNA test," he growled, and Olivia swallowed hard.

"You had no right to do that, Elliot," she was mad now, or so she thought. She was mad that he went behind her back, that she invited him into her home and the only thing that was on his mind was finding something from Noah, some piece of hair or soda can or straw that he could use to figure this out.

She hated the detective in him at that moment.

She hated that he could not look at Noah and know whether or not he loved him, whether or not this was his life, a piece of him, and she reached for the envelope, but Elliot pushed his hand away.

She loved him, but she hated him for everything that he had and had not done.

"You'll be gone tomorrow, back to everything that you love more than us." She the words said sharply, and Elliot clenched his jaw, he would never hit her, but he wanted to. He wanted to grab hold of her and shake her and ask her what the hell he had really left here, but he couldn't.

He couldn't open the envelope, and he couldn't know the truth, because he couldn't go back.

He nodded slowly, and then threw the envelope to the ground, pushing past her and walking quickly out of the station.

He was embarrassed that he was listening for her, listening for her to call to him and tell him to stay.

But she didn't.

---

She didn't want to answer the door, because she knew that it was him. He had wrung the doorbell twice, he saw the lights on inside, and he knew that she was there.

She didn't want to let herself think that she was testing him, making him beg for everything that he had walked away from.

"Jesus Christ, Olivia! Open the door!" She heard his muffled screams as he banged wildly with both fists.

Sometimes she didn't know why she stayed in Manhattan, sometimes she didn't know why she didn't pack up her and Noah's things and move him to a house with a yard, and pool, and a dog. Sometimes she wondered why she made herself keep living with his ghost, why she made herself stay and live their lives without him, with only his cold memory.

And sometimes, when she let herself really acknowledge the answer she was scared, because she could or could not have been holding onto hope that he had already abandoned.

"Please! Olivia, let me in! Olivia!" He was still banging, his hands slapping against the door, his hips pushing against it to try to break it down – to break down the barrier between them.

The reason that she had never left was because she was scared that if she did, if she took Noah and ran away, then if and when Elliot Stabler ever came back, he would never be able to find her. He wouldn't know where to look, and she really would lose him. One of them, she decided, always had to be on base, one of them could never stray – that is how they kept this going.

"I just want to talk! Please, Please, Please-" she threw the door open, Elliot standing before her, shaken and bruised. He was breathing rapidly, and his figure was silhouetted in the city lights.

"You're going to wake up my son." She breathed heavily, and Elliot winced at the possessiveness she had claimed over Noah.

"Just talk to me, please, Olivia, just talk to me." She couldn't allow herself to make the connection to four years ago; she couldn't let herself go back, even though she had never really moved forward.

"So that you can leave again in the morning? Get on a plane with all the answers you think you want and not look back? You want me to give you some sort of piece of mind, Elliot? Because if you do – you're not going to get any, not here." She shook her head, wrapping her arms across her chest and around herself.

He had to shove his hands into his pockets to stop himself from grabbing her, from taking her into his arms and trying to convey everything that he had become to her – everything that he had lost to her.

"I never left you, Olivia." He whispered slowly. How could he need this so badly after less than 48 hours? How could he be where he was now with the minimal, short conversations they'd had, save the previous night with Noah?

"But you did." She felt herself breaking, even though she didn't want to. She felt herself crashing into pieces, even though she refused to let it happen.

This was not how this was supposed to happen.

"I just want to know." He pleaded, and Olivia was now scared with him, empathetic for the uncertainty that he was consumed by.

"I started dating Eric when Noah was nine months old. We were on and off again for a year, he and Noah – they were close, he never had kids, Noah never had a father. He's helped a lot with him." She answered his question from earlier, but avoided the hope in his eyes.

She didn't think that she could do this.

"When's his birthday?" Elliot was counting the days in his head, measuring everything and comparing it and trying not to feel entitled to anything. Trying not to feel like this was his, like he had just walked in on every dream that he had ever had.

"Ask me, Elliot." She moved aside so that he could enter the house, moved aside and silently invited him into her home, the one that he had abandoned.

He wanted to come home again.

"Is that ours, Olivia?" He whispered softly, and she shut the door behind him and leaned against it, pressing her forehead to the wood and trying to figure out why this was so hard, why she felt like he deserved this.

She needed to hate him, to make this all easier she needed to make herself hate him. She needed to go to the place where he left her, the place where he told her that she was not reason enough for him to stay, that she was not good enough for him to love.

Olivia turned around slowly, nauseous because she knew that she was about to lose him again.

She was angry, hurt, scared, that this is what they had come to. Ten years later, and this is where they stood.

"If you're asking me, Elliot Stabler, if that child is yours," she paused for a minute, walking towards him, her finger pointed at him in accusation, tears streaming down her cheeks, "if you physically made him, then no. You didn't. He's no more a part of you than I am." She pushed her hand to his chest and pushed him away from her.

He fell apart. Completely. Utterly. Irreconcilably. He was gone.

He had wanted Noah to save them – to build an arc that would carry them over and through the varied sea of regret, pain, love, fear, loss, that ran so deep between them.

He couldn't breath, because he had placed everything in this.

"But if you're asking if you made that child, if you made Noah, then yes, Elliot, you did."

"Olivia." His voice shook because he loved them, both of them, all of them.

"I wanted him to be yours, there are days when I have to remind myself that he isn't, there are days when I have to pretend that he is." She paused for a moment, but Elliot had no words to fill the silence, he was falling apart. "Noah – Noah is everything that we could have been. He's the result of me loving you, of the hole that you left behind when you said you didn't need me enough." She was sobbing now, and Elliot turned away momentarily, hoping that she would not see the tears on his own cheeks. "I needed something, I needed someone – and it couldn't be you. I wanted for the life inside of me, for my son, to be yours, to be something I shared with you and not donor 7643B2Z from the clinic. Not some brown haired, blue-eyed 20-something year old actor who gave my son half of his life because he needed the money. I wanted his life to be made out of love, out of everything that I felt for you. So when I was there, when they were doing such a sterile procedure and making this all so clinical, I thought of you. Of what this could have really been."

He didn't know what to say to her, he didn't know how he was supposed to react to this. His body felt too heavy for him to support anymore, his head was spinning and he was hot and burning, cold and freezing.

Noah was everything that they could have been. He hung on those words, hung on the possibilities that he had left behind, hung on every opportunity he had ever had, on every feeling he had ever felt, on every ounce of him that still loved her.

"I- I didn't know what to do, Olivia, don't think that it was easy…" He tried to defend himself, but then he stopped, even he didn't want to hear his hollow excuses. She was right, everything that she said was right.

"I will not be what you default to, Elliot. You owe me nothing, you owe Noah nothing." She swatted her tears away with the back of her hand, and felt the floor beneath her shake as Elliot fell to his knees.

It was all crashing down around him.

Every decision he had ever made, every regret he had ever tried to reconcile - it was all falling down around him in the home of Olivia and her son. How could he tell her that he wanted to stay, that he wanted this and he wanted her and he wanted Noah and he needed to be with them, not more than anything else in his life, but just as much? How could he look at her now and tell her everything that he really felt?

He didn't even think that that kind of emotion could be translated into words.

He hurt for Noah, for the part of him that was not his, but some anonymous donor, a decision that he felt responsible for pushing Olivia towards.

He lifted his head slowly to catch Olivia's eyes, the chocolate sea of everything that he had been trying to live without, but in reality was existing without, was stuck in a monotonous circle of routine without.

He never forgot what it felt like to love her.

"You should go." She sobbed, her chest heaving, her whole body aching because this is what they had come to.

She was half a family, and he was a piece of one - a shattered piece and missing whole and a desire that they could not allow themselves to default back to. She cried because her lies, to herself, to Elliot, they were all crashing down around her, cutting her to pieces as they went.

She wanted to not need him, love him, want him half as much as she did.

"Are you sure, Olivia?" He wasn't ready to give up all of his hope. He wasn't ready to completely abandon it. "Are you sure that this isn't mine?" He looked up at her, and she saw everything inside of him that she loved, now paraded externally through his emotions, through the tears rolling frantically down his cheeks, coming to rest in puddles on his shirt.

"God, Elliot." She turned away from him, she couldn't look at a broken dream any longer. "You have no clue how much I want to say yes."

"Yes, I do." He choked out the words.

He couldn't leave until this was handled, until she admitted that this was all some mix up and that Noah really was his, and that she needed to be with him and they would raise him together and they would finally fall into love, fall into the place they had for so long been avoiding.

"You should go, Elliot, I think that you need to go." Olivia took deep breaths, trying to reclaim some sort of sanity, and Elliot leaned forward, pressing his hands to the ground, kneeling on all fours.

"I can't go, Olivia. I can't do this." He said earnestly, and another piece of Olivia, one that she didn't even know she had, broke for him.

"Everyday, Elliot. Everyday I look at my son, I look at his eyes, his nose, his ears, his mouth, his hands, feet. Everyday I look at him and I try so hard to find you there. I will myself to, sometimes. I will myself to find you hidden in one of his gestures, one of his features. I try so hard to find you in him, to make myself think that there is a possibility that he could be yours, that he could be the result of what we had. But he's not. There are parts of him that I make remind me of you, ways he laughs, some of the ways he'll tell a joke. I make myself think that that's you coming through him, that that's you still with me."

"Maybe it is. We were together, Olivia. Maybe he really is ours, maybe-" He couldn't breath, he was stealing the air now, inhaling it in large gulps.

"He's not, Elliot. I look at him, and I see you, not because you're there, but because you aren't." Her words were gentile, and she was somewhat shocked at how much Elliot seemed to need this.

She was scared, almost, that this is what would have made him stay – that a DNA match to Noah would have kept him around, and she was scared because that should have been the last reason why he would have considered staying.

Love could not be proven or disproven by science.

"What do I do now?" Elliot's back arched up and down slowly as he filled with air.

She didn't want to have to answer that question, she didn't want for it to even be asked.

"You go home." She looked away when he looked up to her, cut and bleeding, engulfed in this broken down home.

He shook his head, but she didn't see it. She needed to blind herself to him now.

"Why are you here, Elliot?"

"Because of you, and him, and-"

"No." She stopped him, he was wrong. "You're here because of a case, because that's what brought you back. You didn't come back for me, I was just that thing you found when you returned, that toy that was still right where you left it."

He wanted to yell, but he didn't have the strength.

This wasn't life, this was death. This was dying in three-fourths time, dying as he looked at the only life he had ever had, twisted and turned and rotted away like some old tree, its roots brought up, it's leaves falling away.

"I. Love. You." He made each word hard, and he breathed them out roughly. "I never came back because, Olivia, I never really left." He pushed himself up when he finished, shaking and bruised, he pushed himself back onto his feet, and he challenged the fear in Olivia's eyes with his own.

"You have to go." She walked past him, throwing the front door open and looking to him expectantly. "Forget about us, you don't need us." She cried, and he walked to her quickly and grabbed her upper arms.

He ignored the quick breath that she took in fear as he pressed her to the wall.

"You left me, too." He was hurting her, his hands were bruising her arms, pressing into the bone and ripping at the skin. He pressed his lips to hers in the next moment and forced her to taste him, and she cried as they kissed, sobbed for every moment that he had left her with, for making them an imagination's idyllic notion at best. "Love me." His soft breaths carried the words to her, but she pushed him away.

"I do." His hands dropped from her arms and she shook her head no. "Leave." She said it firmly, but Elliot didn't want to believe her. "Now." She looked away from him, and he couldn't speak, he couldn't find anything to say.

"I can't." He shook his head, but she didn't turn to him, she didn't give him the satisfaction, and his body heaved with defeat.

He couldn't, but he did.

She locked the door behind him after he left.


	5. four

IV.

And hold me and help me understand,

Why on earth I have to be such a stupid man,

To live the way I do, dream the dreams I dream,

So far away from you.

- Three Days, Pat Green

---

Today she wanted his eyes to be blue.

Bright. Dull. Pale. Dark. Blue.

He smiled as he hopped down the stairs, taking them two at a time, and she stood at the bottom, holding his coat with a smile.

"Eric's not at his house?" Noah tilted his head sideways, and Olivia bent down to his eye level and kissed his forehead softly before running her hands back through his blonde hair.

Today she wanted his hair to be darker.

"We won't be there long, buddy, I promise." Olivia held up her pinky finger to Noah, and he nodded, holding his up to join hers. "Pinky swear." They both said at the same time, and Olivia noticed Noah's little finger linked in hers, his complexion the same olive tone as her own.

Today she wanted his complexion to be fair.

She swallowed her guilt, and it fell to her stomach, making her nauseous.

She loved Noah, each part of him, but she was still plagued by how much more he could have been. To love her son to hell, but to still wonder what could be different – that's the guilt she carried most days.

"Can we get chicken and a toy when it's done? Please?" He gave her a large smile as she put his coat on him and pulled his wool knit hat onto his head.

"If you're good." She nodded with a smile, and Noah sat down on the bottom step so that Olivia could put his shoes on for him.

"And 'Tective Stabler can come with us, okay?" He said innocently, and Olivia didn't think that her heart could survive this. She didn't answer him, but instead focused on his little Nike's as she slipped one onto his foot and tied it quickly. "Mommy." Noah reached for Olivia's chin and raised her face so that she could see him.

Her heart was breaking for her son, for what she remembered of Elliot, for herself. And it hurt. It ripped her in half, because she felt like she was losing everything now, losing things she didn't even know that she had.

"He likes the chicken, too. He gets the ones for grown ups, because he doesn't want the toy. Remember?" Noah's innocence pried Olivia open. "So he can come with us, okay?"

She was broken because Elliot had come back for three days, and this is how he left them, a mother looking for more in her son, more than would ever be there and more than he could ever possibly be, and a son, innocent and lost in his mother's tears.

"He went home, Noah." Another part of her lost, another part of her bruised at acknowledging that this was not his home.

"So, we can call him. I do it!" Noah exclaimed, throwing his hands in the air, and Olivia had to stop for a minute, take a deep breath, and then force herself to get up and take today for what it would be.

She had lived this day before, the day after Elliot had come through her life, the day after Elliot had left her, scarred from his words, scarred from the pieces of her life that had cut her as they came crashing down around her.

"Let's go, Noah. Mommy's going to be late." She smiled for him and reached down for his hand.

Regret.

Today she was choking on regret.

---

He felt like he was dying.

The airport was crowded and the people were hurried and loud and obnoxious, and he felt like he was dying.

He hopped that the people around him didn't see him laugh, because they may have thought he was crazy, a middle aged man, blue eyes trimmed in red, alone, laughing amongst the chaos.

It wasn't funny that he felt like he was dying, it was funny because he had processed the thought, funny because he had acknowledged the fact that he felt like he was dying, but really, he was already dead.

He was returning to nothing.

His kids were teenagers now, with no interest in movie nights or weekend lunches. They wanted allowance and rides to the movies, his credit card to use at the mall.

He was going to a hollowed out piece of what was once his life.

He was nomadic because he couldn't be with the one thing that he knew was home.

His chest was tightening, his jaw clenched, because he didn't know how to make everything right again.

He couldn't let himself process the previous night completely, because even the small rememberances of it that he left himself had displaced him from his core.

Atlas had shrugged, and his world was tilted, falling off towards oblivion.

He stopped amid the havoc of the people, stopped dead in the middle of the airport and had to remind himself to take another breath.

This is what it felt like to be dead, he noted.

Last night he left Olivia and the little boy he had wanted more than anything else.

Last night he had walked out on life.

Last night he gave up living.

Today he believed that you could go home again, but all the doors would be locked and you wouldn't be allowed in.

You could go home and stare at this locked up life and wish to be on the inside, but you could never get back inside.

That is what Elliot Stabler, the walking dead, believed today.

---

"I'm sorry, Captain, I just need to grab some reports and check in with Matthew and then I'll take him home. Eric wasn't able to watch him today, and I need to find a new preschool." She lied.

Eric was home, he would have watched Noah, but she didn't want him to. Olivia couldn't take him there today.

"Don't worry about it, Olivia." Cragen smiled to Noah, who was holding tight onto his toy cars.

"Morning Captain!" Noah greeted him loudly as Olivia set him down, and he immediately removed his hat and slipped out of his coat, turning and handing it to his mom.

"Good morning, Noah." Cragen smiled down at him.

"Hey Captain?" Noah was looking around the room, obviously trying to find something or someone.

"Yeah Pal?"

"Does 'tective Stabler work here?" He looked at Olivia first, and then back to Cragen.

Olivia didn't want to be weak, but she was. She fell back onto her chair and leaned her head back, closing her eyes tightly before running her hands over her face.

Four years ago he left her.

Yesterday he left her and Noah.

"Noah, buddy, why don't you sit down and play with your cars, okay? So mommy can get this done and we can go home?" She was guilty because she knew that their home wasn't the same anymore, she was broken by the fact that Elliot had come undone there, that she had to return to that place, to the shadows of him bleeding, torn, scarred, falling apart on her floor for what he thought that he had left there.

She couldn't let herself think of what he would have done if Noah had been his son. She didn't want to think that he would have stayed because he was noble, because he would have taken care of his responsibilities.

She never wanted to be one of his responsibilities.

He said he loved her, again, still, but it didn't seem to matter, because he was gone again.

"Does he work here?" Noah looked to Cragen with his brown eyes, large with question. He didn't understand why no one was answering his questions today.

"Hey, Noah, why don't you come and look at my prizes? You didn't finish last time." Cragen smiled with a nod, referring to the plaques and awards and pictures that were scattered about his office. Noah liked the pictures, he liked touching everything and asking where everything was from and listening to how Cragen had gotten it and why.

"Captain, he's fine, he can sit here and play. I'm sorry." She sighed, reaching for Noah, but he shook his head and ran to Cragen's office.

"I'll look at the prizes!" He giggled as he walked through the door, and Olivia went to say something, but Cragen shook his head and signaled for her to start working.

---

"Captain, it's Stabler." He didn't know why he called him. His flight left in 27 minutes.

27 minutes and he'd be on his way back to nothing.

Funny how it felt like he was already there, at some point during the previous night he had decided to abandon time. He felt like it would make him less pathetic, make it all seem better because he could mourn for life without abiding to time, without missing out on seconds, minutes, hours, days. He could collapse inside himself for as long as he wanted to without being a victim of time.

"Elliot. Is everything okay?" Cragen was standing behind his desk, Elliot was on speaker phone, and Noah had heard him, heard his voice and his greeting and he jumped down off of the chair that he was kneeling on to get a better look at one of Cragen's 'prizes', and ran over to the phone.

"'Tective Stabler!" Noah yelled into the phone, and Elliot's hand tightened around the cell phone, his other hand he placed over his face.

He wanted that life, Noah's life, to have come from him. To think that Olivia had breathed life into that little boy with someone else, even if he was some anonymous number from a clinic, killed him.

Atlas hadn't shrugged, he'd gotten so fucking annoyed with having the world on his shoulders that he let it fall off- Elliot's world wasn't simply off center, it was rolling away from him.

"You okay, Elliot?" Cragen asked when he didn't hear anything on the other end, and Elliot remained silent, robbed of words from hearing the life he'd walked away from.

"I, uh," He was stumbling again, but this time, when he was falling over words and thoughts in the dark of his mind, this time he didn't even have the energy to acknowledge the pain, because there was already so much.

Elliot Stabler was acclimating himself to being broken.

"We're getting chicken and a toy again today! And mom said you went home, but it's okay, you can come back, okay? We'll get you chicken and you can come back to my house." Noah was excitedly jumping up and down as he spoke into the phone.

He needed hope, he needed it to come from somewhere, and when he walked into Olivia's home and saw her and her son, he saw a picture he thought he had only painted in his mind. He saw the broken masterpiece that he had tucked away in the back of his mind, hidden behind his responsibilities and obligations and the conflicting ranking of everything that he needed in his life. But when he saw them he started to love them, because he wanted hope so badly, he wanted them to fit, all three of them, and he thought that they did – not because they had to, but because they truly did.

"I just wanted to say thank you, for everything." Elliot didn't direct his remark to neither Cragen nor Noah, but he hung up the phone immediately, he couldn't hear Noah's voice anymore, he couldn't think about how he was what they could have been.

This little boy with no resemblance to him, who was a constant reminder of everything that he had and had not left with Olivia.

He wanted to feel something.

He was feeling everything, every emotion, every loss, love, fear, that he had ever processessed in the past ten years, but there was so much that he was beyond overload, and so he was at that point at which he felt nothing.

When you're dead, you can't feel anything.

He thought of all the bodies he had found, the lifeless forms of people, hope, dreams, that he had had to return home - the shells of souls, spirits, emotions, that he had to carry back to families. He wondered who would know, by looking at him, that he was one of those people now, one of the victims lost in tragedy.

He wondered who would return him home.

If he could have felt, he would have felt the thunder roll though him, the tearing at his chest and the dissolution of hope when he realized that there was no one.

There was a flood pouring down around him now, drowning him and smothering him with it's weight. Noah's Ark was sinking, and he was going down with it, he was breathing the water in fear.

"We will now begin boarding United Flight 2654 to Raleigh-Durham. All passengers seated in rows 15 and higher are now welcome to board." The attendant announced over the loudspeaker, and Elliot got up from his seat and moved slowly.

Dead man walking.

---

She hurt tonite because she was stupid enough to preserve part of her hope, to place part of her hope into him, into thinking that he would have ever stayed.

"Can we watch the trucks on TV?" Noah didn't look at Olivia when he spoke, but instead focused on covering his chicken nugget in ketchup.

"Sure." Her voice was horse, her throat burned, her body ached.

"And mom," Noah reached out and patted Olivia's arm, and she winced, Noah hitting the bruises left by Elliot's hands from the night before, "we can call 'Tective Stabler, cause Captain knows his number, and he likes trucks, because he told me, and he will watch with us because he can come to our house because he's big and he can go out at night alone and so he can come." Noah nodded to finish his ramblings and then reached for another chicken nugget.

"Noah, no." She was calm, but uneasy. Steady, but shaking. She didn't want to be mad at him, for his innocence, for everything that he didn't know.

"Yeah mom, it's okay. We can call him, it's okay, I talked to him today with captain and-"

"Noah, no! No! He's not coming! Okay, Noah? He went home, he left. He's not coming back! He can't come over tonite, or tomorrow, or the day after that, okay? Okay, Noah? Do you understand?! He left!" She exploded, her eyes closed tightly, and she was breathing fast, taking short quick breaths, afraid to look at Noah, ashamed that she had let this affect him – let this affect them.

"I'm sorry." Noah replied softly in a scared, shallow voice. Olivia let out a deep sigh and ran her hands over her face.

"No," she was frustrated, she hated him for doing this to her, and she hated him more for now doing it to Noah. "Noah, no, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to yell at you, I'm sorry." She got up from her seat at the table and moved around next to him. She kneeled down next to him and pulled his chair out from the table and turned it to her, turned it so that he was facing her. "I'm so sorry, buddy." She apologized for everything; for giving him life without a father, for not giving him Elliot, for both of them not taking equal parts in his life. She apologized for wanting him to be anything other than he was, for wanting him to resemble the man who could not stay for them.

Olivia leaned over and placed a kiss on Noah's cheek, and his chocolate eyes smiled.

Tonite she was happy that his eyes were brown.

---

He didn't turn the lights on when he got back to his apartment. He left them off, left everything to play in the darkness of absent light.

He didn't want to acknowledge the real reason he left the lights off. He didn't want to be that pathetic.

Elliot Stabler was alone.

He was in his apartment, his one bedroom, one bath apartment with minimal furnishings.

He didn't turn on the lights because it allowed him to hide and not see what this all was, where he was. The dark draped over all of his possessions, including himself, and without light he couldn't see that there was no one else there, that there wasn't a toddler's art work on the fridge, or kids movies piled up in front of his TV.

Without the lights on, in the dark, he couldn't see that they weren't there.

He was going to hold onto them in the masquerade of blinding darkness.

He wanted to close his eyes, but he couldn't. Even in the dark, he couldn't close his eyes, because then his memories would roll across his mind like movies, colored movies without sound that showed him what he had done.

An insomniac's dream.

He knew that he couldn't do this, each part of him knew that this was no way to live his life – that sitting in the dark, trying to blacken out everything that he needed would never last. It would never sustain him- he needed more.

He missed Olivia's eyes, so thick and deep that he was lost in them. He missed Olivia's smile, the one that she reserved only for him. He missed Olivia's heart, the way he could feel it when he was close to her, the way he could feel it's life when he pressed himself to her.

He needed to feel her breath.

Elliot needed to be close enough to her so that he could feel her breath.

---

"It's ringing!" Noah jumped up off of the couch and ran for the phone, his hair was wet from his bath, combed back off if his face, and he was wearing thermal pajamas, navy blue with animals on them.

"I'll get it Noah." Olivia got up off of the couch and walked into the kitchen, where Noah was standing, the phoned pressed to his ear and a smile on his face.

"He wants to talk to you." Noah shrugged and handed the phone to his mother before walking past her, out of the kitchen, and back to the couch and his movie.

"Hello?" She walked towards the living room so that she could keep an eye on Noah.

There was no answer on the other end of the phone.

"Hello?" She asked again, grabbing the bridge of her nose as she let out a soft sigh, but there was still no answer. "Noah," She called to her son at the absence of another voice, but just as she said his name the person on the other end responded.

"Liv. It's me, Liv. Olivia, it's me." Elliot found his voice, and Olivia swallowed hard.

"What do you want?" She wanted to be mad, but she didn't have the energy. She wanted to love him, but she wasn't sure she had the courage. She wanted to hate him, but she didn't have that ability.

"I want to ask you a question. I have to ask you a question, Olivia." His voice scared her.

"Elliot, we can't do this, don't you get that? This isn't just me anymore, this is me and Noah and these are our lives that you tore apart, so just stop, okay? Let's just stop this." Her tears were silent, and she was thankful, because she didn't want him to hear them.

"Olivia," he started.

"Elliot." She said his name as strongly as she could.

"Would you let me in?" Her body covered with chills, and she ran to the front door and threw it open, expecting to find him there, but she didn't. They city lights played on the empty black streets, and she didn't want to think that she wanted this. She didn't want to let him hurt her this way, too.

"Elliot, please." He could feel her tears, even though he couldn't hear them.

She wanted to tell him that he was wrong for thinking that she had a choice, that she had a choice about whether or not she could or would or did love him. It wasn't an option, it wasn't a choice, it was who she was.

Elliot needed to come back, but he needed her to let him, to let him come back to her and Noah and their broken home and try to find some piece of what they had before and fuse it to the pieces they had now and hope that they could mold into something.

"Would you let me in, Olivia?"


	6. five

V.

She felt like she was living in a black and white movie.

She felt like she was living inside of a black and white movie where she would cry when she saw him and he would smile and they would meet on the top of the empire state building at sunset and life would displace itself from what it was to what it is.

A black and white movie where everything was in slow motion, and she didn't want to be hopeful and she didn't want to be restored but she was anxious and waiting and she knew that if he didn't stay this time, she would disappear, too.

Disappear into a formless shell, robbed of every emotion, good and bad, that he had ever given to her. This time, there would be no moving on, moving past, making it a regret.

Today she wanted to believe in such a thing as a happy ending, in such a thing as fairytales and castles and forgiveness.

The forecast for today was dark and cloudy with the potential for loss.

---

He didn't pack anything. He had one bag with a few pairs of clothes, but that was it.

Elliot Stabler, the nomad, was going home.

Elliot Stabler, the living dead, was coming back to life.

He wouldn't let himself feel the hope inside of him, the scattered pieces that were coming back together as he walked out of the airport, back into the Manhattan air. He wouldn't let himself feel entitled to this, that because she hadn't told him no that that automatically meant yes, because she hadn't told him that, either.

She had told him that she couldn't stop him, that she could have never stopped him. That if he came back today, three years ago, four years ago, or four years from today, she could never have stopped him.

Today he was glad that he couldn't feel anything. Glad that he couldn't feel the pile of regret in his gut, the tangled mass of left turns instead of rights, glad that he couldn't feel his fear for what this not working would and could do to him. The potential for him to return to this life and be turned away, back to the land of the dead, back to the mass of timeless days and reflection less eyes, was something that he would rather not process.

In the absence of life, there is death.

In the absence of death, there is life, existence, or routine.

In the absence of Olivia, both were interrupted.

Elliot Stabler, interrupted.

Today he would go home again, he decided, and pound down the doors to the house, rip apart the locks and break through the windows and crawl inside. Add to his scars, add to his pain and bruises and scrapes and crawl through the broken glass windows to get inside Olivia, those were Elliot Stabler's plans for today.

---

She took Noah to Eric's for the night because this was not going to be easy.

She felt like a million pieces, like she was comprised of one million broken pieces, and she didn't know if all the kings horses and all the kings men could ever put her back together again.

She didn't know what she was supposed to do; she was a pile of uncertainty placed on fear, covered by hope, which sat beneath pain and was squashed by love, and she didn't know if she was supposed to look at him and take him coming back – him asking to come back and getting on a plane and flying back to New York, not for a job, not for a case, not for a victim –she didn't know if she was supposed to forgive him for that alone, for at least taking that step.

And then she was scared- scared because she was stupid enough to think that he wasn't coming back for a victim, because he was. He was coming back for a broken piece of life, with a broken pair of eyes and a heart that could or could not have still been beating – she would have had to have the ability to still feel in that way to know.

The phone wrung at the same time as the doorbell, and she froze, picking the phone first because it required less effort. It was less personal interaction; less of his eyes, his body, his life (or death), his constant reminder of broken promises and memories and hope.

She was tired of being broken, she didn't mind scars, if they couldn't get her back together again completely, then she understood that there would always be scars, scars of what had happened, of what hadn't happened. Scars that reminded her that for every good thing there was something equally as bad – scars that would keep her going, scars that would remind her that you could piece life back together, a broken menagerie of pieces, to create a masterpiece.

Olivia answered the phone with a shaky breath, expecting to hear Elliot, but instead startled by Eric.

"Liv, it's Noah, he fell and I think he might have broken his wrist."

Hello, disaster. Olivia started breathing fast, running her hand over her face and not knowing how to handle this whole thing now.

"Wait, what?" She was already moving, grabbing her coat, slipping on her shoes, trying to find her purse.

"I'm taking him to Mount Sinai."

"Okay, okay, I'll be there." Olivia hung up the phone, throwing it to the couch, and then ran towards the door, throwing it open and not pausing to acknowledge the pieces of Elliot standing outside.

"Olivia?" She ran to her car, and Elliot spun on his heels and walked quickly down to her.

"Get in," she offered no immediate explanation, but Elliot followed her directions.

He could see her again; see her in the dark, clouded city with low clouds and artificial light. He closed his eyes for a moment in the car and took a deep breath, taking her into him and giving himself a minute to remember exactly why he was here – exactly why he was anywhere.

"Noah fell, he hurt his wrist, Eric's taking him to the hospital." She explained hurriedly as she pulled out into traffic.

"Jesus, is he okay?" He leaned forward and turned his head to look at her, to see the mother's fear that she was displaying, and he didn't want to smile.

"I don't know, Elliot!" She broke in panic, for Noah, for Elliot, for what they were trying to do.

She didn't want to play house.

She didn't want to be toys, plastic people in a plastic house with plastic limbs and hollow bodies. Plastic limbs that broke easier, absent hearts that hurt less.

For all the pain she felt at the moment, for all of the blacked out pain that she wouldn't let herself feel, she still wanted the capacity. She didn't want to be robbed of that if this whole thing came falling down again.

She didn't want to be left numb.

The forecast for tonight was overcast with a high chance of destruction.

"Okay, okay. It'll be okay. He's going to be okay." She didn't know if she should let him comfort her, if they were there yet, if his asking to come back and being back really meant that he was back.

Elliot Stabler, optical illusion.

"Can we just not talk until we get there?" She didn't want filler conversation, she didn't want him comforting her or trying to make this okay because she wasn't ready to let him do that.

"Uh, yeah. Yeah," Elliot cleared his throat, ignoring the pain he was starting to feel.

When you're dead, you can't feel pain, he remembered with a smile.

---

He stayed a step behind Olivia when she asked where Noah was, stayed a step behind as they took the elevator to the pediatrics floor, and waited while she talked to the doctor.

This was the place he had assumed four years ago, and he didn't want to jump into this next to her because he knew that he had no right.

"Olivia!" They turned around at the same time to see Eric walking towards them, and Olivia ran to him, her eyes questioning.

"I just talked to the doctor, it's broken?" She looked Eric over slowly.

"Yeah, Liv, I'm sorry, he was running upstairs and he just tripped and landed on it," he apologized, and Olivia nodded.

"It was an accident, Eric," she watched as Elliot wandered down the hall to the room at the end – Noah's room. "You can go home, thank you for watching him, though." She wanted to ignore the look in Eric's eyes that was fearful that he was about to lose this displaced family. She had to ignore it because he wanted to give it to Elliot, and she couldn't hurt for Eric and Elliot and Noah all at the same time.

---

"They have blue ones?" Noah looked at Elliot through his tears, but his face was smiling.

Elliot was glad he had Olivia's eyes and not those of a stranger.

"Yeah, they have all different color casts. They're pretty cool. And we can write stuff on them, draw pictures." Elliot wanted him, he wanted every part of him and he wanted for him to come from him, if not biologically, then in every other way possible. He wanted to love him and mold him and be his father – give this son a dad.

When Olivia walked into the room, when she stood in the door and watched her son and Elliot she didn't want to think that this was right, because she was still holding onto the uncertainty.

"How are you, buddy?" Olivia stopped their conversation and walked to Noah, kissing him sweetly.

"Good," Noah nodded. "Mom, look, it's 'tective Stabler, he came to see me." Olivia was scared because she couldn't reserve part of Noah for the uncertainty of Elliot. "You said he wasn't going to come back, but he did, Mom, see, this is him," Noah pointed to Elliot.

Elliot swallowed his guilt.

"Yeah, Noah," Olivia sat on Noah's bed and ran her hands through his hair before wiping at his tear stained cheeks.

"The man said I broked it," Noah looked to his mother with a confused face, his head tilted sideways and his eyebrows arched.

"You did. He's going to give you a cast so that it can get better, like a big band aid," Olivia answered.

"I know, 'tective Stabler told me about that. But mom, you never said you could break bones." Noah's eyes were blinking rapidly with question.

Olivia refrained from telling him everything that you could break; bones, dreams, promises, emotions, feelings, love. She wanted to spare her son that, for now, she wanted to keep his innocence intact while he still had time.

And then she looked to Elliot, he had his hand placed protectively on Noah's knee, and she had to turn away.

These were the only two men that she had ever loved; an innocent child and a bruised cop.

And again she remembered that she had never had a choice.

---

Noah's cast was blue. They got chicken and a toy on the way home from the hospital, and he was sleeping now, tucked away with the realization that what's inside you can be broken.

"I should go," Elliot cleared his throat and ducked his head. The air between them was laced with a mixture of awkward and need and neither knew what to do with this moment.

This is what ten years, six together and four apart, had brought them to.

Elliot felt like he was in a dark room, a room of lamps without light bulbs, a room of boarded up windows and locked wooden doors and he wanted to light a match and watch it burn.

"Elliot," she started, but couldn't finish. She wanted to be strong enough for now to erase everything that had happened before, but she knew that that would never be.

He said nothing, but he moved to her, slowly, and reached for the sleeve of her t-shirt, lifting it slowly and pushing it up over her rounded shoulder. Biting his bottom lip so that he could taste the crimson blood that spilled into his mouth he ran his thumb over the bruises he had left – the visible marks of his journeys in and out of the life of Olivia Benson.

"Can you forgive me?" Elliot asked softly, and Olivia closed her eyes, leaning her head back and taking a deep breath as Elliot moved so that he was completely in front of her and with his other hand he moved her other sleeve up over her shoulder and ran his thumb over the marks he'd left there.

Olivia didn't know what he was asking her.

She didn't know if he was asking for forgiveness for everything, or only for the external, tangible marks that he could see. She didn't know, either, if forgiveness existed for something like this, if it was forgiveness they were dealing with or some other form of fighting past demons, some other way to get past the marks that he had left her with.

"Olivia," He breathed her name, and he watched a single tear roll from cheek, down her jaw line and into the well of her collarbone.

"What am I supposed to say to you, Elliot? What am I supposed to do with this?" She didn't want him touching her anymore; she didn't want him coming through to her in that way yet because it tore her down and left her open and defenseless and she still felt like she had something to fight for.

"I left, and I shouldn't have-" He stopped because he saw her have a physical reaction to his words, a slight shiver and she looked away from him.

He felt the guilt roll over him, through him, but he smiled momentarily.

When you're dead, you can't feel guilt.

"Please," Olivia turned back to him and placed her finger over his lips. She didn't want that memory anymore, she didn't want the memory of him walking away, of him not looking back and not coming back and not calling and leaving her in pieces that she had never fully been able to recover, because he had taken them with him. She wanted that part of the movie, of the silent movie filled with ghosts, to stop.

Elliot moved to her, but she backed away.

"Don't," He shook his head and put his hand out to her, a bridge between them, a bridge to join them and shock the life back into him. "To feel nothing, but still be alive," Elliot looked to her, his jaw clenched as he shook his head back and forth.

"You made the choice, Elliot," she shot back at him.

"The wrong choice, Liv," he liked that her name doubled as the action.

"But it doesn't change it, it doesn't change this." Olivia was glaring at him, and Elliot took a forceful step towards her.

"No, Olivia, the whole world changes, but this doesn't change. This hasn't changed, okay? Can you believe me? Can you forgive me? Can we do this? Jesus, Olivia, I want to do this. We've been waiting to do this for 10 years, and now-" Olivia's tears stopped him.

"And now everything else is out of the way. You dealt with your other responsibilities and now you can come back to me, to us. Do you know what that feels like, Elliot? What it feels like to have to wait until you take care of everything else that is more important to you before you can come back for me?" She challenged him, her tears running frantically down her face, and Elliot shook his head.

"No." He fell to the floor, sat down with his feet out in front of him, his hands running over his face, and through his fingers he looked up at every mistake he had ever made.

Olivia looked down at the broken dream that had stolen her soul away, and she didn't know if she should break or mend for the sight of him, sitting lost in her home.

"Can you forgive me?" He asked her again, reaching his hand up to her, his heart beating in his throat for the choice that she was about to make.

"Elliot."

"Damn it, Olivia, this is it! This is what we have now. You have a son and I have regret and mistakes and an existence. This is where we are, this is where we're at, take a left or right or turn around and sprint like hell, I don't care, but do something, let me know what this is, Olivia, you said I could come, that I could come back and you would let me in and we could see –" He stopped when she put her hand in his, linked her fingers in his and fell to the ground next to him.

"I can't forgive you, Elliot," she said honestly, and Elliot pinched his eyes closed, and this time he felt himself fall apart, this time, this half living man felt himself die. "But we can try to do this, anyway, because I can't let you leave again, either," she shook her head, and Elliot opened his eyes slowly.

Olivia leaned to him, met his lips with her own, and breathed the life back into him.

This is what it felt like to be home again.

Doors opened, windows opened, locks broken, life reinstated.

Welcome home.

---


	7. end

Author's note; Thank you so much to everyone for everything they've said about this fic, really, ya'll are awesome. This will be the last chapter, I realized too late that the last chapter could have been a good ending, but oh well, here this is. Short and sweet. Enjoy, and thank you. -Kulligan.

VI.

As he climbed the steps he felt as if he were going to church.

Going to the place where everything that he believed in, his foundation, his soul, his morality, was grounded.

Father, Son, Olivia Benson, Amen.

She was his religion.

Today he was scared and nervous and on the way to being restored.

Today he had faith in something, the belief in something and the will to actually believe in it.

Last night nothing more had happened than a kiss and a wordless promise that they would get somewhere beyond where they sat at that moment, even though, as Elliot watched her through his tears he didn't care if they ever moved, as long as they remained stagnant together.

He had called his children that morning, called his kids and told them where he was and why he was there and that he was going to be staying. Part of him was hurt when they didn't beg him to come back, when they understood and were okay with seeing him two weekends a month, and didn't cry and tell him that they needed him all the time, but the other part knew that they felt him fading away, that they were growing up into who they were and that he was falling away from who he was and they wanted him to be okay, so they didn't make him choose.

The sun was out today, the city highlighted in it's light. He felt like he could finally stand in it, let it prickle against his skin, let it bring him out in all of the right places – today he would not play in the shadows, because today he wanted nothing to hide.

"Morning," she smiled when she answered the door, and he wished that they didn't have to make up for lost time.

He didn't say anything right away, and she scolded herself for being nervous. The man before her was three parts past and three parts present, and she wanted to not believe in any unknowns.

"Hi again," Noah smiled, coming out from behind Olivia, balancing a paper plate of silver dollar pancakes.

"Woah, buddy, let me help you." Elliot bent down to him and took the plate from him.

"Are you eating with us?" Noah walked past Elliot and sat down on the steps and turned back to Elliot expectantly.

"He is." Olivia answered before Elliot could. "I'll go get us some pancakes, you guys sit down." She nodded towards Noah, and Elliot gave her a lazy smile before going to sit next to him.

"How's your arm feeling?" Elliot handed Noah the plate of pancakes, and Noah shoved one into his mouth before answering.

"Okay. You gonna sign it, right?" Noah smiled to Elliot, and this was the moment that everything felt right, for the first time in years, for the first time in forever, for the last time in forever.

This would be all he needed.

Sunday morning pancakes on the front steps with Noah, Saturday night secrets with Olivia. This was the point in his life where every sharp edge was being converted, rolling itself into a circle.

Today, tomorrow, yesterday.

Olivia, Noah, Elliot.

"You ever broked anything, 'tective Stabler?" Noah asked as he looked up into the sky to watch the planes, and Elliot ignored the formality.

"Yeah, Noah, I have," Elliot cleared his throat, hoping that Noah would not ask what he had broken, why or how he had broken it, because the story of his shattered pieces was not something Noah needed to hear of.

"What if it itches?" Noah held his arm out in front of his face, looked at his cast with his head turned to the side, and Elliot wanted to think that he got that from him, that even in his absence, even without his genes, there was still an element to Noah that belong to him, transferred to him through the element of Olivia that always had.

"You get a little stick and shove it down there," Elliot smiled, and Noah nodded, content with his answer.

Elliot stopped reminding himself that he was alive, because he felt in now.

Felt it in Noah's eyes, his smile, his life. Felt it in Olivia, in the chance that she was giving him, in her letting him come back to this broken down dream and make something out of it.

Dreams can be lost, but not broken, Elliot noted as he looked to the little boy next to him.

"Hey 'tective Stabler," Noah started to ask when Olivia came back out with two plates of pancakes and sat behind Noah and Elliot.

"It's Elliot, Noah." She wished that she could give him more, but the loss of the distant formality would be the first step to many.

Baby steps.

Elliot froze when she said his name, that she believed him, in him, for him, that she believed in him enough to introduce her to her son.

Olivia saw the look in his eyes, and she saw Noah look with a smile to Elliot.

There was no going back, Noah would love Elliot, Elliot would love Noah.

This is what Sunday morning should be, Olivia noted with a smile as she heard Noah ramble on about something indecipherable, heard him linking random words with corny jokes and a loud giggle.

Elliot reached back and placed his hand on Olivia's knee.

Everything he believed in; Sunday morning worship.

"Elliot!" Noah yelled, laughing, when he didn't think that Elliot was paying attention to him. He got up from sitting next to Elliot and walked in front of him, leaning in close and commanding his attention.

Elliot swallowed hard when he noticed the little blue specks scattered through the brown of Noah's eyes, when he saw the little tile worked mosaic of the flicker of light.

Olivia leaned down and shook as she kissed Elliot's neck, and then tickled it slowly with her finger.

This was a family; shattered, broken, and glued back together.

A masterpiece was never perfect and was always comprised of broken halves.

"Do you know?" Noah asked Elliot a question about everything that he had been rambling on about, and Elliot smiled slowly when he let himself make the connections between this little boys persistence and his own.

Olivia bent over and spoke slowly, letting her voice linger in his ears before traveling to his newly reinstated heart;

"He get's that from you."

-

end.


End file.
